....S E L F C O N T O R T I O N

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

This post is for Thomas of Closet Case because he didn't know whether to buy this or not. I saw Merchandise live near the end of March and they were great. They had a living breathing drummer, which made everything sound a lot better. I really enjoyed their demo cd when it came out, so the drum machine on subsequent releases kind of threw me off. I didn't give them a fair chance for a while after that, but now that I've heard what the current line-up can do live, I'll probably give Children Of Desire a listen. Iceage were good too, they had more of a punk sound/energy than I was expecting. Anyways, no pictures since this is a 12"(maybe later though). Here ya go.
Edit: mediafire sucks now and is listing the file as copyrighted, so I took the link down (you can't download it anyway) but I'm leaving this post up for my incredible show review.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Previously, I posted the Stressors demo. However, it wasn't the very first recordings Stressors made. We did two sessions for the demo, and only used the second (for the actual tape). Above is the flyer for our first ever show. Zero Progress had to drop (I think they were already playing another show). It was in Little Sam's (Casket, Public Suicide, indie stuff) garage. I propped our small amp on top of a table. We sounded alright, I think people were into it. I'm not sure if we had actual tapes yet. I remember Public Suicide being pretty good. For some reason, our old bassist was blasting Andrew WK as we drove up to the house. I don't think there's any pictures of the show, but here's one of some old Burnt Ramen gig we did from the same time period.

The music I've posted here is one long track of the first takes of songs, some of which would end up on our demo. The track list is:
1. Public Transportation
2. Pariah
3. Pariah (take 2)
3. Stuck In The Desert
4. Mind Death
5. To Serve Man
6. Imposter

There aren't any vocals on them. I'm not totally sure why. Noah might have just decided it would be easier to record them separately at his house. He did end up overdubbing vocals on three of the songs (Mind Death, To Serve Man and Pariah). The only voice you can hear on this recording is Eagret yelling "oi!" on the breaks in "Stuck In The Desert." Also, someone says "serious" after "To Serve Man," probably referring to the jazz chord I played at the end of it for no reason.

These songs were recorded at the beginning of a musical transition period we went through. We finally decided to let go of an old crappy band name and head in a different direction. Our bassist didn't really like it, and when he heard the vocals on the recordings, it was another thing he disapproved of. I think he liked being in a lighter, more melodic, and less serious band. A few months later, we had our current bassist. These recordings might not be much, but after taking such a long blogging hiatus, I had to give you something. I also included the three songs from this session that vocals were later added to. I don't know why I haven't posted in a while, I guess it's because my scanner works on and off. I also don't often feel motivated to make blog posts. I wish I had a way to scan LP covers. Oh well. Zip it up and zip it out.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Raw Meat are a band formed from the remains of Nomos. At least that's what I thought before I saw pictures from Nomos' set at Not Dead Yet in November of this year. So either they aren't broken up or they just played that fest as some sort of special occasion. Then again, it could just be mislabeled pictures of Raw Meat, as I haven't seen any flyers from the fest that show Nomos played. Anyway, this intro sucks but I don't know a lot about the band so I'm not sure what to say.

This tape was remixed by Will Killingsworth and will be released as a 7" in the future. The cover looks fairly bad, but maybe I just saw the test press or something. You can find more about/contact the band at rawmeatband.tumblr.com

Whoever mailed me my copy was nice enough to include a book that I vow to read someday. Thanks.

It was produced in a pretty small quantity, but it's possible that they made more later. I'm not sure. My favorite song on the tape is Spite, I like the verse riff a lot. That's about it. I always feel so lazy with this blog because I post once a month, if that. Gotta go study for a final tomorrow, see ya later.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

It's raining outside and the wind is blowing hard. Time for some bloggin'. It's been a while, man, life's so rad. This band's my favorite, don't you love em'? My cat is putting her paw on my arm to remind me to pet her. She's also licking my elbow, at which I'm laughing hysterically. Anyways...

The cover of this is so ridiculous it's pretty much comical. To me, the daughter in the corner pushes it over the top. It appears to be drawn by the same guy who does the Crazy Spirit artwork. I remember seeing those little creatures in the booklet for Crazy Spirit's latest LP. One guy is giving the cop a blowjob, another is stabbing him, and yet another is stabbing himself while jacking off. Not something you see everyday. The back cover conveys the band's feelings on the NYPD, Bloomberg, and other stuff that's too sloppy to read.

I like the A side of this record the best. It starts out pretty strong. I like the ascending high notes part of the verse riff. It also picks up speed about halfway through, which is good for someone that has a short attention span when it comes to punk (me). The high notes of the guitar against the bass part in the beginning of "Mad Problems" is cool. After that, it's a decent song, but its lyrics are sort of generic and it uses the tired old "head/dead" rhyme seen since the beginning of punk. The bass is also pretty low in the overall mix of the record.

The third song uses pretty much the same line as the previous one ("Every time I wake up I wanna die"/I wake up in the morning and I wish I was dead"). The third song, however, ends up transitioning really effectively into the fourth, and the songs go well together in that regard. The lyrics of "Needles" explores the futility of staying healthy when you're going to die anyway. I can't relate to this sentiment, but it's the fastest song on the record, so I like it.

"Jail Cell" begins the B-side, discussing the shittiness (and possibly rapiness, I'm not totally clear on that) of being in jail. I'll just take their word on it. "Street Scarred" has a great intro part. Bitch is my least favorite song. It appears to be a sympathetic portrayal of domestic violence from the point of the abuser. I hope it's not autobiographical, but if these guys are the druggies they want to portray themselves as, it could be. Obviously a lot of punk lyrics are written out of anger though. I guess I'm saying I don't take this stuff too seriously.

This was put out by Burn Books, who released a cool NY compilation tape early last year. It is sold out from the label (burnbooks.org) but it says the second press is coming soon.

I was actually wondering when somebody was going to use this picture for something punk related.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

This tape was made when Zero Progress was just starting out. They had only been a band for two or three months when it was recorded on Christmas Eve of 2009. I'm pretty sure John (Stressors, Beat Guts, Easy Living) drew the cover art. That Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers inspired font was probably Ed's doing. Ed plays bass for them. I remember going to his house with some spare change sometime in early 2010 to pick it up. I got to choose which tape I wanted from the box, which was cool because every single cover was printed on a different color.

I was excited to listen to it because it featured all new songs. It sounds pretty great for being recorded with a single microphone in Collin's garage. The drums on ZP recordings always come out well because Josh plays pretty hard. I don't remember all the lyrics (no lyric sheet) but one of my favorite lines comes from the first song. "I'm sick of these kids and everything you say, you're a waste of a punch but I throw it anyway." The song "Out of Touch" is about when Zero Progress played with Youth Brigade at Gilman and YB took all the door money. "Uphill" used to be one of my favorite Zero Progress songs because of the cool drum part before the vocals come in. It's funny listening to the old recordings of these songs. They seem so slow compared to when they're played live.

This tape was originally made to be distributed on Ecoli and Migraine's tour. They ended up having van troubles and halted the tour, leading Zero Progress to sell the tape themselves. It was lucky for them, because Stressors ended up giving our tapes to Ecoli later when their tour actually took place, and most of them were lost. This tape is also the first on Piledriver Records, run by Ed and Matt of Zero Progress. The same label later put out ZP's first 7", amongst other (San Ramon) Valley bands (Stressors, Beat Guts). Zero Progress has improved with each release they've put out, and their newest 7" can be purchased in the Piledriver Records Store. Listen to this awesome song from it.

Friday, July 27, 2012

I figured before I left for tour I would post one more thing. This was made because I had 20 extra tapes lying around and I wanted to put them to good use. We gave five of them to No Statik to sell on the east coast tour they were soon leaving on. We sold the rest at shows, though it didn't take that long considering how many of them were made. It's also not our best release quality-wise because of how limited it was. We recorded it pretty quickly (in time to give them to No Statik) with one microphone in our practice space at Kevin's house. The bass is too low and it's hard to hear the snare at times. It has plenty of songs on it though. Now that I'm looking back at it, I see that it has our entire 7", plus a few old songs and one song recorded for the 7" but scrapped due to time constraints.

When Kevin uploaded the files from the field recorder onto his computer, they were labelled "sangeet." I later learned that was sanskrit for "music," but it puzzled me for a while before I finally looked it up. It's two tracks, Side A and B. I might separate them later, but I'm feeling lazy.

Come see us on tour if you can, we'll show you a bloody good time...mwhahahaha!

Zero Progress and Stressors are leaving for tour tomorrow. Zero Progress will have their 2nd 7", which can also be purchased (and downloaded for free) here. We will have our a special tour edition of our debut 7", the A side of which can be heard here. We will both have shirts.
Thanks to Mikylah for making a tour poster for us.